jonschaper

People at a party read different stories from a book, that we see portrayed on the screen. The problem is that all the stories would, in reality, have been rejected by amateur publishers, and gotten poor grades as a junior high writing assignment.

For example: Woman opens cookbook, we see her preparing her food. She cuts up a human (off screen) for meat, then for some bizarre reason serves an obviously overooked head to her excited guests instead of the meaty dinner we saw her preparing. People working at a site talk about a local legend of a killer scarecrow. The scarecrow shows up for the last 10 seconds and kills them offscreen. And, no, I'm not leaving anything out. That's all you can find in way of plot. It's a movie where there are uniquely no spoilers because there is no plot to spoil.

All the stories lack any suspense, character, motivation, anything. They're just plot points someone might use with the intention of later fleshing out, but plot points with zero creativity behind them. Just mere cliche. And, for those who care, there's not even any gore to make up for the lack of actual story.

I am a fan of short horror fiction, so I see zero blame for running time when it comes to the complete lack of storytelling. In fact, given how threadbare the "plots" are, each "story" runs far much longer than it should, with no redeeming qualities like good acting, visuals or dialogue.

I've watched the first 3 episodes and don't think I'll bother with the rest.

Performances: The show has some really great performances -- even some of the casting people feared would be little more than stunt casting has worked thus far with Vivienne Acheampong doing a strong job as Lucien. But Sturridge as Morpheus is dull. Not a good thing for a title character. You don't really notice until the second episode when instead of being a silent prisoner (something he did well) moves on to him having to carry his scenes. He lacks any of the gravitas his character should have. He just seems like a calm, softly spoken person, and nothing more. It works when Morpheus is supposed to be calm and softly spoken, but there's more to his charcter than that. And Cain and Abel? Boy, did they get that wrong. At least they're incidental characters thus far.

Script: The first half of the first episode showed great promise. Opening exposition aside, even the changes made largely served the story (although I didn't agree with all changes like having the Corinthian playing the role of Exposition Device). But it goes downhill after the elder Burgess' end, with the show quickly skipping over about 80 years of the younger Burgess' life. No flashes of the decline of his father's cult from the 60s to 70s to 80s, etc. And then, worst of all, they do not really show what his fate is when that is an important demonstration of Morpheus' power and wrath. Burgess might as well just be another victim of the sleeping sickness. Which leads to:

ZERO foreshadowing given about what happens with any of the victims of sleeping sickness. Although they give a couple minutes screen time to a super wealthy 1920s black British family, they come off as your typical throwaway, anonymous characters from the earthquake scene in a disaster film. Which is symptomatic of two problems: The show doesn't like to use subtle foreshadowing when they can instead sledgehammer things in constantly with disrailing exposition. And it seems to throw out the original source's focus on how all these cosmic events affect people on a personal level.

The strength of Sandman was how it showed how things affected the normal humans caught up in events. But here, instead of focusing upon how posessing Morpheus' sand affecgted Rachel, they chew up screen time with a cheesy story of Joanna Constantine performing an exorcism played for laughs. And Joanna herself is haunted by an extremly watered-down version of John Constantine's Newcastle experience that leaves you wondering why she feels any guilt, not that she seems to be much of a troubled soul in the first place. So Rachel is reduced to an incidental character whose sole role seems to be as a token ticking diversity boxes for a couple seconds.

And the pacing is horrible after the first episode. As I hinted at, story and character give way to endless (no pun intended) exposition. Do they want to send people off to dreamland by inducing sleep themselves?

If anything gets me to stick to the series it would be my curiosity to see what they do with "24 Hours" from issue 6, but even if I wasn't already underwhelmed by the show I'd worry about how well that story translates. With all the choice available these days (much of it away from Netflix) I'm not sure I'd bother investing more time.

There is a lot of dross to navigate through with reviews these days. On the one hand you have people who hate any film that dare cast any women or minorities, and on the other hand you have idiots who think casting a black woman as a white male Norwegian king is a somehow a prequisite to making a film or TV.

In the case of Turning Red, many of the negative reviews are coloured by the former form of idiocy, like one person claiming the film takes place in a "woke fantasy" where "most" of the population wears turbans. Actually I found it to be a pretty damn accurate depiction of the wonderfully diverse population around Toronto's Chinatown and Kensington Market area, and the person who claimed that two people with head coverings represented "almost the entire population" was being hysterical. The main inaccuracy I found was the idea that a wealthy kid from what appears to be the Rosedale area would be going to a public school in the area the film centres around, just because they wanted a wealthy student as part of the plot -- not that a super wealthy kid was needed.

So getting to the substance: It was thankfully nowhere near the metaphor for menstruation than I was led to believe, nor the kids as smug as some positive reviews led me to believe. But one critique that was spot on is that the film seems to be geared primarily to young girls, so it wasn't the sort of enjoyable experience for the whole family I'd expect from Pixar. If anything I found it dull, my young daughters found the boy band (and the characters' obsession with them) annoying, it didn't hold their attention that well, and it seems those who would most identify with it's coming of age theme would be those with a mother, like the one in the film, who is emotionally abusive and cold.

Not a horrible film, but one I couldn't really actively recommend for any audience.

I personally don't give a crap how much the characters resemble the originals. I don't like anime, and I'd like to think I'm mature enough to judge a show on its own merits.

That said, I found the show rather uneven, and uneven enough that I never wound up feeling fully invested in it.

At its best, it had snappy dialogue, cool visuals, likeable characters, great action, good performances, imagination, etc. At its worst, the visuals fell flat (thanks to some Syfy level cheap looking backgrounds), scenes dragged due to poor pacing, etc.

To use an analogy: In terms of quality, it sort of ranged from good Quentin Tarrantino to Robert Rodriguez at his worst.

Personally, I thought the show was at its weakest when it was focused upon continuing storylines insted of the mission of the moment. It goes to show that while continuing storylines can be great for some shows (e.g. Ozarks), for other shows it is a millstone that can weight down a good concept into the mud. (I'm not sure who wrote a memo stating that TV can no longer be purely episodic, ever. But that moron should be shot.) For the same reason, I suspect the show was weakest when it tried to stick most closely to the original anime storylines, but maybe I'm wrong in blaming the anime -- maybe that's a more legit reason some fans of the original didn't care for the show (if they got over the lead not having red hair)

I've heard the show has not been renewed. If the show were consistently weak, I wouldn't care. But thanks to that potential shining through once in a while, I'm left feeling disappointed. Instead, I feel lukewarm.

The movie starts out a bit slow. Basically we're introduced to the protagonists and find out why they are holed up in the middle of nowhere. Then the action begins when one of them sees a KKK execution in progress and intervenes. From there, you get pretty much non-stop action as the two factions battle it out.

What makes this a "horror" film instead of an "action" film is the copious amount of gore. The KKK, who are more akin to cannibal families a la Texas Chainsaw Massacre, than your usual KKK members in films are partly responsible for that gore and some of the sadism, but so are the protagonists as they quite sensibly avoid holding back while fighting a bunch of psychos who outnumber and outarm them.

And that's why I found it a guily pleasure. It doesn't have an amazing plot, or a profound message, or impressive fight scenes, or anything. But it is refreshing to watch a horror film and not have to keep thinking "WHY DIDN'T YOU MAKE SURE HE'S DEAD!!!". And, heck, it'll always fun to see any group of Klansmen get what's coming to them, and that's a major factor in making this a guilty pleasure. No woke preaching about intersectionality. No stunt casting (yes, the KKK are miraculously all white males in this one). Just good guys fighting evil racists.

It is well filmed -- no cheap digicam footage feel or anything like that. The fx are effective enough. Heck, I even like the titles which were pure Tarrantino. And I always liked a 70s rural setting for horror. And bonus points for not one single annoying teen in the film.

I'm a big fan of bad but entertaining movies. Unfortunately this one is just bad.

The majority of the film is a fictional depiction of an America's Top New Model sort of competition, and is just as annoying (when it isn't boring). The main difference is that the women don't look anorexic, which is quite welcome, but unfortuantely most of their mass is plastic.

Oddly for a film whose main appeal (besides horror) is meant to be T and A, the one and only sex scene involves a woman who goes out of her way to awkwardly cover up her breasts with her arms. Because, you know, one always feels the need to be modest in front of whoever they're having sex with. There is another nude scene, but largely of appeal to fans of beachballs.

As for the horror: That part of the plot seems to have been almost completely forgotten. Most of the makeup is mediocore (for some reason they have a leprachaun who isn't even all that bad a person looking like he has bad eczema). And the visuals of the film give it the look and visual mood of a kids show like The Wriggles. No shadows, bright saturated colours, etc. Even in the age of digital replacing film, most directors still manage to create some mood. Not here.

Charles Band at least remains a competent music composer, but you've now heard it all in his previous films.

I thought it worth countering one of the only critiques I've seen of this series, i.e. That it is not exactly the same as Jeff Lemiere's comics.

The fact is that's a strength. The original series, while well done, feels like it was made up as it went along, with various subplots forgotten along the way. The TV series, in contrast, is far more tightly plotted, likely because it benefits from having Lemiere's material to draw from after-the-fact. What it does capture, if not the meandering nature of the comic series is what was important to it: Its spirit. Its sense of light shining in the darkness.

As for other critiques like that it is too "woke"? Why? Considering that critique is never expanded upon, all I can figure out is the fact that it casts non-whites, including for role that were white in the comics. I hate preachy shows, and I've yet to see preaching in Sweet Tooth.

Plot holes? Besides the suspension of disbelief required for the concept (no more than required for a zombie apocalypse, or most shows these days about 9-11 responders, various professions in Chicago or the Navy or forensics, etc, etc, etc), all I can imagine is that some people didn't watch the entire series. That's their perogative, but please, don't make up s#$% when writing reviews.

I usually like Ed Helms, and often enjoy poor-taste comedies. Not the case here, since the movie is not a comedy by any stretch of the imagination.

Coffee and Kareem is about an evil sociopathic kid played by an actor with zero charisma, teaming up with a cop who is not so much incompetent-played-for-humour as incompetent in a manner that is annoyingly unrealistic becuase the plot depends upon that in order to be stetched past 10 minutes. Because, after all, if he knew how to use a phone or a radio or a gun or how to communicate in person, the entire film would be wrapped up within 10 minutes.

The plot hinges on the idea that a kid would try to arrange to have his mother's cop boyfriend beaten up so he can film it. So he asks the cop boyfriend to give him a ride home from school, an act designed to set up the cop for a beating. When the kid finds the people he is going to hire to beat the cop are already torturing a cop (I'll call the man, who is tied in a chair with an ear cut off, cop #2), the kid does what comes naturally in that situation and instead of hiding stands there and watchings the torture, then openly engages the torturers in in friendly conversation, and suggests to them that his wife's boyfriend is sexually molesting him. He only gets shocked when the bad guys kill cop #2, and only because he now realizes at that point that his own life is in danger as a witness. So of course he and his mother's cop boyfriend go on the run (supposedly what an armed cop does in that situation), with the boy stopping just long enough to taser his mother into a coma for telling him off for reporting to the press that her boyfriend is a child molester.

Again, NONE of that is presented in a humourous manner, although one is to assume that a kid acting like a complete sociopath, as played by an actor with zero appeal, is supposed to be daring comedy. And one assumes we're supposed to care that someone else is trying to kill the boy. We don't.

There's no social satire like you'd find in a black comedy. There's no humour. The best you can get out of it is the fact that thankfully none of the characters are people in your life.

I'm sure that somehow by the end of the film the iredeemably evil kid who belongs in prison works things out with the cop who apparently doesn't even know how to dial a phone, and they stop the people after them. But I cared so little I stopped watching.

I've watched other biopics about bands whose music I wasn't into and found it rewarding. "Straight Outta Compton", for example, was enjoyable despite that and gave me much more appreciation for them. That wasn't the case here.

For one thing, "The Dirt" didn't do as good a job at making me care about the band members before portraying them in one excess after another. The introduction to the cast of characters, and the story of how they got together was okay. But most of the dramatic incidents in their lives of any meaning seemingly flashed by too quickly for it to have much emotional resonance. And when things went bad, it was almost entirely brought upon themselves, which made it more difficult to feel sympathy without having the band members made all that much more real or identifiable to begin with. And while I applaud the band's openness, that self-destruction comes off too much like bragging at times - even when that sometimes involved them hurting others in the process.

Don't get me wrong -- I did wind up feeling sympathy at times. And the performances were great. And it had its humorous moments and points of interest. In particular I cheered on Tommy Lee for dumping a girl for treating his mother like crap. But he managed to ruin even that moment of triumph by being too violent.

I had some hopes for this series because while Steve Niles is one of the worst horror writers to somehow have a successful career, he does come up with some really good ideas for set-upsbefore completely ruining them with his terrible writing and inability to figure out what to do with the last two out of three acts. Perhaps, I thought, someone could take his ideas and make something decent.

Boy, I was wrong. I think I stuck with it because I liked the adults as a cool pair of monster hunters. Unfortunately the majority of the series turned out to be a teen drama featuring smug, unappealing brats very few can identify with, and with the moral of the story being that monsters, like gay teens, just need love and understanding. The best parts of the show turned out to be the maybe total of two scenes where the smug brats get slapped down by their elders for their absolutely horrid, immature, spoiled, entitled, "I'm rich and beautiful so you have no rights, only I do" behaviour because I wished I were the one doing the slapping.

While Mountain Monsters is filmed in a documentary style, it is quite obviously scripted. Some people might get upset about that, but taken as a fictional show it is a hell of a lot of fun.

A team of guys many people might refer to as "rednecks" or "hillbillies" go around the Appalachians investigating various cryptozoological creatures. Mostly variations on Big Foot, but there's also things like skinwalkers chupacabra, and sometimes more supernatural fare including Blair Witch style figures thrown in. Each episode they learn some background of the creature then try to set up traps to capture one which, for whatever reason (inteference by others, underestimating the intelligence of what they're up against, whatever) inevitably fail. The formula does risk reptitiveness, and I think I benefitted from coming into the show in later episodes where they caught their stride. But they throw in things that keep it fresh, e.g. they sometimes run into other dangers like moonshiners, poachers, mysterious rival groups (willing to kill instead of just capture creatures), etc, as well as supernatural mysteries. And the characters keep it interesting.

The main characters are quite likeable, fun, and aren't dumb stereotypes (well, not all of them) often showing good intelligence. In fact (fashion sense and diet aside) could even be considered positive role models since they support each other, go around trying to help others, express opposition to the unethical treatment of animals (although they're hunters themselves), use creativity and problem-solving, etc. I think someone would have to be a bit of a snob to dislike them. Which is a huge contrast from most found footage / documentary style horror shows where a lot of the action depends upon the leads being obnoxious idiots. And the production design of it can get quite good at times (although there's one case where they directly rip off Blair Witch).

The film consists of two elements that are meant to work together. A documentary about a mysterious film that seems to bring bad luck or even death to its viewers, and the film itself, called "Antrum" (supposedly made in the 1970s, lost, then rediscovered with some mysterious elements added to it). Unfortunately while the film itself is great, and the documentary framing sequence is a decent concept, the two don't gel together very well.

"Antrum" on its own works quite well as a surreal 1970s horror film; one that depends on its mood and creepy story instead of gore, bodycount, special effects, etc. It works well on its own as a dark, tragic fairytale, or a child's nightmare. The conceit of the framing documentary seems to be there primarily as an excuse for making it a fake 1970s film, and for adding in some surreal distortions to the sound and imagery.

One unusual feature of the film is that at first seems to end on one tone (with a shot with the words "THE END" superimposed), but then after some strange imagery, the film continues to run, ending on a different tone.

There's also some mysterious "tampering" with the film (including flashes of violent imagery, and sigils) explained in the "documentary" as being added after the film vanished and before its mysterious reappearance. Unfortunately those splices seem unnecessary and do not add to the effectiveness of "Antrum" like some of its more surreal distortions do. I was hoping they could tie in things together better with the documentary, but other than returning to the documentary and matter-of-factly noting some of those edits, you wind up with nothing.

Ultimately, it seems like there's no reason why "Antrum" itself is cursed, and caused deaths before someone (or group) even got ahold of it and spliced things in.

The documentary provides a nice setup, but it doesn't really pay off, and when you return to the documentary at the end it just feels like a pointlees denoument (and I thought most of it would have worked better at the start of the film).

I feel that it would have worked much more effectively if, for example, the 70s film took an even stranger turn once its main narrative was completed, showing additional footage that was captured suggesting something happening to the actors while making the film (beyond just a few distortions) because they possibly unleashed something while filming, performing fake rituals, etc. There seems to be an abortive attempt at some points in that direction, but they seem to mostly give that upin favour the supposed later editorial intereference by persons unknown. In my mind, those splices actually took away from the notion that the film itself, when first released, was cursed and that what makes the film weird instead is what was done to it later.

The only thing this show has in common with the original series is the opening credits and title. There are minimal dramatic re-enactments (and I'd barely call them that), no narration, only one story poor episode, poor pacing, and (for well over half an episode) little more than shots of slowly speaking people who knew the victim walking around and brooding, etc. Even ignoring the disappointment of not getting to watch a new Unsolved Mysteries (and the additional disappointment of now being denied that opportunity by having that franchise name exploited by producers who probably couldn't otherwise sell their series) it remains a highly mediocore crime documentary series when there are many better shows out there.

I really wanted to like this show because the two Kates' Katering Show was good fun. However, sitting through an entire episode is of Get Krack!n is an excrutiating chore.

Breakfast TV is an easy target for parody, but even then I'd expect something better than what a giggly 11 year old could come up with. And yet they've somehow succeeded in making 11 year olds seem like Voltaire in comparison.

Every episode, for example, has the same psychotic drunk shilling cheap products. Why? Because they couldn't figure out how to do an effective parody of the product placement segments common on Australian breakfast TV. So instead they rely upon us going "Oh look! A crazy woman with apparent substance abuse issue! Bravo!!" That's not parody. It's cheap laughs.

Even when the show gets things right, like today's episode about how breakfast TV hosts have to act like they're enjoying themselves on the road when they're probably not, they tend to stretch that one joke for way too long until it wears thin, and then becomes annoying. By the time you feel like you've been pummeled with the same point enough, they try to break things up with other skits suggesting, e.g., that all small-town males in Australia are rapists. Ha ha ha. (And, really, if you want to make travelng through small-town Australia seem dreadful, why pick a beautiful place like Echuca?)

That aforementioned skit also about how funny rape is highlights the hypocrisy of the show. It's message is "It's okay, because we're making fun of hicks!" But every week we see the same "whites are terrible to aboriginals" joke done over and over again. I don't mind it when jokes are PC, but when it is the same variation on the same ineptly done, heavy-handed joke every episode, delivered in a wooden manner, and it gets juxtaposed with jokes that ironically see no harm in suggesting people who aren't from the white, Melbourne latte swilling inner suburb crowd are somehow worthless subhumans? I find myself starting to react against that PC humour instead of agreeing with it. If their goal is to advance wokeness? They're part of the problem of making it look smug and fake.

It's quite apparent that the sole reason for the success of The Katering Show was its brevity. It is quite clear that the Kates are incapable of anything of substance, and making silly faces will never be a substitute for wit.

Way too often I see Australian reviewers take it easy on mediocre Australian films because they want to see the Australian film industry succeed. How they think that does anyone any good is perplexing. It encourages mediocrity. It causes Aussie films that are actually good (like The Babadook) to be viewed with suspicion and distrust even when they get good reviews -- because if Paper Planes can get positive ratings for being Australian, so can pretty much anything.

I'll start with the soundtrack. The only song which I imagine was originally written for the movie goes something like this: "The world is full of beauty / So boys and girls shake your booty" (the tune itself is even more devoid of appeal). And then there is what I think is THE most unthinkingly tasteless use of music in a film EVER when the lead boy's grandfather shows up with baked goods while "My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard" plays. WTF!?!?!?! I'm no prude. That might have worked in an Abrams and Zucker film, but here it is totally out of place. Considering how clueless much of the direction of the film is, I couldn't even bring myself to see it as some sort of deliberately perverse joke. Sort of like people who cluelessly play "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" at funerals, or "Every Breath You Take" at weddings. No, that wasn't creepy at all.

So on to the plot: Sam Worthington is wasted as a man who just spends the entire film moping. He is such a useless weight you just want to slap him. And he's the film's sole source of emotional gravitas. Next, for suspense we have this unusual plot device: The lead boy goes from making the greatest paper airplane ever to instantly forgetting how to make one (I mean, he cannot make a plane that goes more than a few inches), etc -- whatever thecontrived plot needs at the moment. I will avoid getting into that in any more detail to avoid spoiling anything, but the film is so utterly clichéd and paint by numbers you barely have to watch any of the film to know how it will all go.

"BUT", you might say. "It is made for KIDS. They haven't seen (The Wizard / Karate Kid remake / generic kid enters competition film)." And, of course, even in predictable films it is the journey itself that counts. Well, my daughters (almost 4 and 8) haven't seen any of those other films yet, either, and Paper Plans completely failed to hold their attention. Was it because it lacked animated characters? Or was it too mature? Hell, no. In contrast they have, e.g., watched "Bridge to Terabithia" with full attention from start to finish -- a film that actually deals with serious issues like love, loss, bullying, friendship, redemption, etc, effectively, without Sam Worthington moping around like a worthless bum for 5 out of every 10 minutes. Usually the girls comment about the movies we watch together. The only thing either brought up was when the 3 year old asked where the boy's mummy was. Paper Planes is, quite simply, barely watchable garbage. Which is a shame since Sam Worthington and David Wenham are great actors -- even this dog's breakfast of a script cannot hide that fact -- but nothing could possibly save this film.

For about a month Australian audiences were subjected to advertising telling us that the concept behind Gogglebox might sound stupid but the show is actually good. My wife and I decided, heck, lets give the show a try. Big mistake. Exactly how bad was it? Well, imagine the very worst reality show you ever watched and try to figure out how to make it even worse, and you have Gogglebox. What is worse than a reality show about dumb, irritating people? How about being trapped in a room with a bunch of boring people watching a reality show about dumb, irritating people. Now make it even worse. Make a reality show about boring people watching disjointed edits of a really bad reality show about dumb, irritating people so you can simulate being stuck in a room with those people whilst suffering short-term memory loss and dementia-style confusion.

Here is the basic concept of the program: Take clips from another TV show, deprive those clips of any context or continuity so they are just a disjointed mess, cut to miscellaneous people apparently picked out of a hat (or at least not on the basis of their wit), and show us their reactions. Cut to cooking show. The rich bitch makes a face. Cut to audience at home who note she made a face. Cut to host of cooking show talking about a miscellaneous dish. Cut to audience members talking about how they think he has a nice voice. Cut to guy with obvious southern US accent. Cut to dumb boring random person wondering if he's from Canada. Cut to other random person mentioning that the guy on the TV is a Texan. Flashback to 6 months of advertising for My Kitchen Rules about a Texan whose charm is making turkey noises. Cut to next random scene and inane comment from other boring person.

Do you think this review is long and rambling? Well, you have not experienced the sheer hell that is Gogglebox. Really, this, along with water-boarding, should be made illegal. It is torture. It is cruel and unusual punishment. It has zero benefit to intelligence. It strips us of our humanity. Yes, the show is that bad. I'd rather watch paint dry because frankly being bored to death is better than being subjected to this evil monstrosity of a show.

I can only conclude that the critical accolades they referred to in the commercials for this program (which, I reiterate, were built around the fact that it was a stupid concept) must have been for the British version of the show which I can only conclude has access to better clips and more interesting viewers. Or maybe they promised not to make the critics watch the show again. That would be more effective than threatening to shoot their dogs, rape their wives, and release embarrassing photos.

Apologies to the people who appeared on Gogglebox. You're probably nice people. I'm probably not interesting to watch whilst I'm watching TV. I'm not Mike Nelson either. But you are being used as instruments of torture.

I used to watch this early Sunday mornings in syndication and always preferred it to The Bugs Bunny Roadrunner Show. Porky Pig skewed towards early cartoons, mostly predating the more famous Looney Tunes characters. The cartoons that made up the lineup for Porky Pig tended to be more zany and experimental, and spoofed much of the pop culture of the time. My two favourite cartoons were of a barely recognisable Porky Pig courting a barely recognisable Petunia Pig until he realises how lazy and shallow she is, and another showing a series of surreal incidents at a beach (starring many Hollywood parodies). Not as omnipresent were the same characters going through the same basic conflicts over and over. If Bugs Bunny Roadrunner were Mad Magazine, Porky Pig would be the insane early Kurtzman edited Mad comics.

I have to admit that Freddy's Nightmares pushed the boundaries of television. However, about all the series consisted of was a different teen being targeted each week by Freddy for death. Each episode was designed so that it could be syndicated as either an hour long or half-hour long episode. In other words, half of each episode could be cut from the show without effecting the story, which helps illustrate how bad the plots were! Basically, whatever annoying teen was targeted that week would go through all sorts of weird experiences that would cause him/her to start questioning what is reality and what is dream until, finally, he/she gets finished off. The half hour shows just cut out some of the dream vs. reality stuff and got to the death more quickly. Some of the nightmarish scenarios could be creative, but overall the program showed no more creativity than you would expect from a splatter film.

About the only thing that made each episode different from the one before was that each student would have a different obsession reflected in his or her dream. One might want to be able to stand up to bullies, one might be a geek in love with a cheerleader, etc. So the show's popularity came from combining gore with adolescent wish fulfillment fantasies. Don't expect the show to appeal to anyone other than adolescent boys.

Considering that the Friday the 13th movie series single-handedly ruined the horror film industry for over a decade, this series, which has absolutely nothing to do with the films (see other reviews for good descriptions of its basic premise), is surprisingly good.

Unfortunately, the series was very uneven, and later seasons became increasingly weak. However, at its best, the series was adept at combining truly suspenseful storytelling with a killer dark sense of humour. Some episodes were even relevant. One of my favourite episodes (a 2-parter) dealt with the hypocrisy and dark secrets that often exist within quaker/mennonite style communities (there are many in the area where I live). At its best, the series dealt with issues like vanity.

A later series called Brimstone was almost a bad copy of this series. But instead of ordinary people being corrupted by magical objects and becoming supernatural killers, in Brimstone, the supernatural killers were already evil escapees from hell. That is one of the (many)reasons why Brimstone was never as good as Friday the 13th, the Series.

I wouldn't be interested in getting the whole FT13 series on DVD, but it would be great to see select episodes released.

This show greatly suffered from network interference. The creators originally planned for their show "Fearsum" to be scary but with a dark sense of humour. The network decided that they would rather call the show "Freaky Links" and make it lighter in tone. What resulted was a very uneven program which was very good when the creators stuck to dark humour, but became cheesy, self-parody whenever they gave in to the network's demands. Even before the pilot aired, some of the creators began publically distancing themselves from the results. That's the unfortunate thing about TV: artists have to bow to the demands of those who finance the programs, and those who finance the programs usually don't know a single thing about good art. Without such interference, Freaky Links could have become an excellent replacement for the X-Files which, at that time, had largely worn out its welcome with its increasing emphasis upon "mythology" episodes filled with plots going absolutely nowhere.

The only good thing about this series was John Glover as the Devil. His portrayal of the Devil as a slick, corporate CEO type (just like the character he plays on Smallville) has to be THE best portrayal of the Devil I have ever seen. If he were the main character instead of just a cameo in each episode, the show might have lasted. But the use of supernatural trappings did not change the fact that Brimstone was just another really bad TV series about an ex-cop bounty hunter.

"Beyond Belief" was a replacement for another show (I believe it was called "Sightings") which every week covered stories about UFOs and the supernatural. "Sightings" had its own faults, including its frequent failure to really critically analyse anything, but it was still interesting and used real interviews, photographs, etc. I believe the show didn't last because it eventually became extremely repetitious. So along comes "Beyond Belief" which each week would present half a dozen short stories, some of which were fake and some of which were "real". Audience members could then try to guess which was which. So now instead of getting to watch a show examining any evidence of strange phenomena, audiences were instead exposed to plays no better than the average junior high creative writing project, full of cliches and too short to really get into. No suspense was ever built up, and the endings could be guessed within the first 30 seconds.

If all the stories were supposed to have actually happened, then even with the audience's lack of involvement with the characters, the lack of evidence presented, etc., the stories might still have been slightly interesting. However, the fact that half the stories were admitted total fiction made them totally pointless wastes of time. It didn't help that in my opinion, host Jonathan Frakes had all the charisma of a paper bag. And while I love terrible puns, the ones Frakes constantly relied upon were just plain bad.